Ti­rau yoga tu­tor’s twist of fate

The stress of a mar­riage breakup and ad­just­ing to a for­eign coun­try took its toll on Pham. Months of in­som­nia led to men­tal and phys­i­cal health prob­lems.

At her wits end she found her sav­ing grace in yoga.

Fast for­ward three years and Pham, who is orig­i­nally from Viet­nam, is now a qual­i­fied in­struc­tor and ready to meet the South Waikato’s grow­ing de­mand for yoga. She opened her new stu­dio, Yoga Body and Mind, at 17D Main Rd, Ti­rau on Mon­day.

She said yoga has trans­formed her life and she wants to help oth­ers im­prove their lives through it too.

‘‘I was break­ing up with my hus­band, I couldn’t sleep for a long time and I had come from a place where they had eight mil­lion peo­ple straight to Ti­rau which at the time only had 900 so ev­ery­thing was a shock,’’ she said.

‘‘Through a year of prac­tis­ing yoga I im­proved my phys­i­cal and men­tal health and be­came more peace­ful and nice be­cause of it.’’

She said for over a year she has been teach­ing yoga from her house which be­gan as a way of help­ing women in­volved in Ti­rau’s The Big­gest Loser weight loss pro­gramme. De­mand has now out­grown space.

‘‘Many peo­ple from Pu­taruru and Ti­rau have had to go to Mata­mata and Cam­bridge be­cause there has been noth­ing lo­cal,’’ she said.

‘‘For the last five months I’ve been hav­ing more and more peo­ple com­ing so I de­cided to move from my house to the stu­dio so I could have more classes.’’

‘‘The more I’m teach­ing, the more I love it be­cause I want to help oth­ers and with the new stu­dio I’m now happy for more peo­ple to come in,’’ she said.

She said her clients are al­ready see­ing re­sults.

‘‘After a few months of do­ing it they sleep bet­ter, are less stressed, and now know how to breath prop­erly,’’ she said.

‘‘Yoga also helps you re­cover from other ex­er­cise as well and your body will be soft and your mind will be calm which peo­ple get a lot of ben­e­fit from.’’

She said yoga was for all ages and was par­tic­u­larly ben­e­fi­cial for older peo­ple. Her senior classes are done with chairs.

‘‘With older peo­ple it is about bring­ing them out of the house, work­ing to­gether, meet­ing other peo­ple, and car­ing about their health,’’ she said.

‘‘The driver of the [north­bound] ve­hi­cle was un­in­jured, but un­der­stand­ably shocked.’’

The road was closed for three hours fol­low­ing the crash, as both lanes were blocked by the ve­hi­cles and de­bris.

Phillips said that his crew had at­tended five crashes in the last two months. Two of them were fa­tal.

The New Zealand Trans­port Agency is plan­ning short-term safety im­prove­ments this year on the nearby stretch of SH1 from the Cam­bridge sec­tion of the ex­press­way to the SH1/29 in­ter­sec­tion at Piarere.